


The Martian Sun

by Gwyn_Paige



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Canon Non-Binary Character, Character Study, Episode: s03e01-02 Juno Steel and the Man in Glass, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24448348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwyn_Paige/pseuds/Gwyn_Paige
Summary: Once he was aboard the Carte Blanche, Peter couldn't help but notice how brightly the goddess Juno had begun to shine.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 31
Kudos: 135





	The Martian Sun

**Author's Note:**

> As I was writing this, I realized that I had accidentally rewritten part of Peter and Juno's late-night meeting at the end of The Man in Glass. It wasn't my intention to go against canon but I liked the scene so much that I decided to keep it as-is. So be warned, there is some slight canon divergence at the end of this, but nothing too painful, I hope. Enjoy!

More than a few lifetimes ago, when Peter Nureyev was Rex Glass and Juno Steel was merely a beautiful curiosity in a bulky trenchcoat, Peter had asked him about his namesake.

A goddess of protection. At the time, Juno had laughed it off, but Peter had wondered if perhaps there was something there, underneath the bravado. Juno was far from the warmest person Peter had met, but there had been something in his eyes, even then, that betrayed how much he cared. He did not have much to call his own, in those days, but he was fiercely protective of what he did have. His detective work, his secretary Rita. The people Peter did not ever get the chance to meet whom Juno called his friends. Hyperion City and its citizens, the people he had dedicated his time and career and life to saving. A short list, but Juno seemed to do his best to keep them all tightly pressed into the inside pocket of his trenchcoat, as close to his heart as he could.

Peter had filed all of this away for future consideration, of course. He had planned to have a long, pressing conversation about it with Juno over breakfast, after their first night together.

The goddess Juno was capable of fierce protection, yes. He was also capable of extraordinary cruelty.

Peter had listened to the quiet rustle of clothes being retrieved, to those soft, barely perceptible footsteps leading from the bed to the door, the gentle hiss of it sliding open, then shut, a finality that couldn’t have been more certain if the door had been slammed on its hinges. And the infinite silence afterwards. That was the worst part of it, as Peter recalled. The room completely still and dark and lifeless except for Peter’s own breathing, which hardly counted at all. _If a man lies alone in a cold hotel bed, does he make a—_

That night he had felt hardly anything except a dull ache in his chest, not unlike the feeling that precedes a bruise. He slept for a short few hours and woke up angry. Angry at Juno, angry at himself, and for a long time he could not tell which was stronger.

As time went on the anger, as most things do, faded, and gave way to a bittersweet nostalgia. The rare few times he had reason to look the detective up, it appeared as though Juno was in the process of moving on with his life. Peter would always linger on those reports, noting the changes in Juno’s eye, his hair, his clothes. His bruises. His scars. So many close calls, so many reckless scrapes. Some things never changed, Peter would muse, ignoring the pangs in his chest as he watched, in brief snapshots, a life that Juno Steel was living without him.

He loved him, still. Even underneath the anger and the melancholy, he loved him. More than that, when the dust had settled, Peter found that he still trusted him, and this was a relief above all else. Peter regretted plenty of things in his life, but giving Juno Steel his name was not one of them.

For someone who did not consider himself a protector, Juno was remarkably good at keeping two words safe.

Many times, Peter considered contacting him. He could have, if he really tried. If he really wanted to. But every time his finger hovered over his comms, something stopped him, something in between the memory of almost-silent footsteps and the look in Juno’s eye on the latest report. He tried to imagine what he would say, if he did call, but for the life of him Peter couldn’t think of a single word.

He could imagine what Juno would say, though. _What are you doing, Nureyev?_ Tired and accusatory, all the warmth of their shared bed left far behind. _Didn’t you get the message the first time around?_

And at the end of the day, of course, Peter was a coward, and he would put his comms away. Still, he saved the photos from every report.

When Peter finally saw Juno again, in person, for the first time since he walked out of that hotel room, he was struck by how different he looked.

No, _different_ was the wrong word for it. Juno’s clothes were almost exactly the same as the last time Peter had seen him. His face was identical to the most recent report Peter had read. Even his haircut had not changed.

Juno did not look different, Peter realized, as he gazed at him from where he was perched on the hood of the Ruby 7. He looked _unfamiliar_.

His posture, his eye, his smile. The way his hands moved to rest in his pockets. The warm ruddiness of his cheeks. The slight shuffle of his boots in the sand. The single, stray curl that hung next to his remaining eye, catching on his lashes each time he blinked. The looseness, the freedom in his body, as though the world’s weight had been pulled away, just slightly, from his shoulders. The warmth of his voice, so unlike the cold aloofness Peter had heard in his head so many times.

Peter did not recognize this person. This was not the Juno he had known when he was Rex Glass, or Duke Rose. This was not the Juno he had spent the night with, when he was just and only Peter Nureyev.

The person who stood before him on the Martian sands, his coat flapping in the wind and a wry smile on his face, was not a goddess, Peter was sure. But, he thought as the deep orange light of the setting sun caught Juno’s profile, it was perhaps the closest Juno had gotten to being a goddess since Peter had known him.

For a while, Peter tried to avoid him, unable to reconcile this new Juno with the old one, unwilling to disentangle their past from their present. It was all just a mess of confusion and memories and strong emotions in Peter’s head, and he couldn’t hope to deal with it all while there was a job that needed to be done.

It did not help matters that every time Juno approached him, wanting to _talk it over_ , and Peter shot him down, Juno would give him this infuriating _look_. It wasn’t the look of a kicked puppy or an offended cat. Those might have been in Juno’s repertoire before, and Peter would have accepted them gladly, as a kind of punishment. But now, Juno just looked at him with resignation, a look of disappointed understanding and _love_ , yes, Peter could see the love in his eye as plainly as he had seen his own mirrored back at him each morning for the past year as he applied his chosen face and thought of his lost detective. A look that Peter couldn’t take as punishment, because it was not meant to be one; it merely asked a question that Peter could not answer, made a simple, gentle request that Peter could not agree to.

“Juno,” Peter would say, in those moments, the word a denial and a warning all at once.

And Juno’s face would not change; the love would not leave his eye, and the beautiful, horrible downward curve of his lips would not budge. “Right,” he’d say, quiet, warm. Tired. “Sure, Ransom. Another time.”

Despite Peter’s proclivities for running from his problems, Juno would always be the first to walk away from these exchanges. He always seemed to pin Peter to the spot with that look and those words, two pins on the corkboard directly through his head and his heart.

Extraordinary cruelty, indeed. But there was never any victory in the goddess’s stature as he left Peter behind.

Every time, Peter thought about following him. This was to be expected; he’d been thinking about following Juno since the first time Juno had walked away from him. But that was where it began and ended, because Peter did not run _toward_ things. He certainly did not run towards Juno Steel, not even when he was asking Peter to. Not even when Juno would meet his gaze across the room, a vision against the backdrop of space through the window behind him, his expression sad and loving and hopeful, his eye like a distant star, burning and glorious and utterly out of Peter’s reach.

Peter lost track of the number of times he paused by Juno’s door, late at night, knowing that if he knocked, Juno would answer. Knowing that the detective would gladly sit him down on the edge of the bed and take the chair for himself. Juno would sit on it backwards, Peter knew. He’d put his chin in his arms and lean his head to the side, tired but attentive, as the two of them talked. They’d talk for hours, Peter knew, because there would be hours’ worth of words to say. And eventually the words would run out, and Juno would slowly rise from the chair and move to sit on the bed beside Peter. And Peter would allow Juno to kiss him, and Juno would allow Peter the same. And Juno’s kisses would burn, not because they were a goddess’s, or a star’s, but because they were Juno’s.

Peter did not knock. There were no words between them, except for Juno’s hopeful suggestions and Peter’s stubborn dismissals. There were no kisses. And all the while, Juno’s burning presence drifted from room to room, as though daring Peter to follow him.

It was like that until the ball.

It wasn’t the dress, although it helped. The wide, sparkling, golden affair was perfect for their disguise, and frankly it was perfect on Juno, who as much as he complained was clearly soaking in the attention he was getting. _He_ thought it was the dress. Peter knew better.

There was a common misconception among people that clothes made the man—or the lady, as it were. In Peter’s experience, this was rarely true; clothes could _help_ one fit into a role, but the actual skill, the performance, came from within oneself, and no gaudy disguise could conjure it from nowhere.

No dress could prevent Juno from tripping over heels that were far too tall for a spin on the red carpet. Still, a dress could allow him to move in on a target, to steal a priceless artifact, to melt into a crowd as though he’d been born for it.

But it was not the dress that made Juno shine from the inside out, eye flashing and teeth bared in a grin, the sparkling gold that hung from him dim and drab compared to his hands, his skin, his words. He was a sun, now too bright and too warm and too close to be called a star, and any clothes he might have worn were an afterthought compared to the light he himself exuded.

They danced only for a brief, distracted moment, but Peter could later still recall the precise feeling of holding Juno in his arms, of dipping him low, Juno leaning back with all his weight, all his trust, in Peter’s grip. For a stunning instant, Peter held a goddess against the pull of gravity, and the effort of it was not the reason he had trouble catching his breath.

The other attendees spent their evening occasionally looking at things and people that were not Juno, and for the life of him Peter could not understand how they managed it. _What are you looking at?_ he wanted to ask them. _The sculptures, the chandeliers? The extravagant fashions? The other dancers? Your spouse? Why waste your time? How do your eyes not gravitate back to him, at every opportunity? For goodness’ sake, there is no other source of light in the room!_

Peter was half-surprised, when it was all over and they had returned to the ship, that he had not been burned or blinded. That Juno’s attention had not singed him, and had only warmed him down to his bones, and he was even more surprised that Juno did not seem to realize this.

The goddess, when the mission debriefing was done, made a beeline to his room, muttering something about _getting out of these uncomfortable damn shoes._

Peter was careful to pace himself as he rose from the meeting table, bade everyone a good night, and walked down the hallway to his own room. Slowly, as though moving through water, he flicked on his light and emptied his pockets, storing everything in its proper false drawer or secret lockbox. Methodically, he set about removing his disguise, first his coat, then his vest, then his tie. He untucked his shirt, undid his corset, untied his shoes. When he was in nothing but his slacks and socks, he removed his makeup, took off his jewelry, combed the gel out of his hair. In less than twenty minutes, Monsieur Dauphin was gone, his remains spread out across the floor of Peter Nureyev’s bedroom, a crime scene without a body.

He changed into a pair of loose-fitting pajama pants and tied a robe around his waist. He sat down heavily on the edge of his bed, and realized he did not have the wherewithal to pick up the rest of his clothes.

He should sleep. He wanted to sleep. But Peter knew he would not be able to.

Three doors down, off to his right, the light of a sun glowed gently.

Peter fought every urge to reapply his makeup, to wash his hair, to put on a freshly-pressed suit. He would go to Juno rumpled, and unpolished, and _himself_ , or he would not go to him at all.

Peter followed the sun’s glow down the hallway, his bare feet sticking slightly to the linoleum floor. In his head, he counted: one, two, three doors. He knocked on the last one, which was just like all the others, except for the fact that this was the door he had been staring at every night for the past few weeks.

“It’s unlocked,” came the muffled, warm voice, almost at once.

He found the goddess sprawled across the bed in just his slip, heels abandoned by the door, dress deflated and draped across the back of an armchair. His makeup was smudged and his earrings were still on, and his face was pinched in concentration as he typed something furiously into his comms.

Peter adored him, in that moment. If he had been better dressed, and if their circumstances were entirely different, he would have gotten down on one knee and proposed right then.

He didn’t, of course. The door hissed closed behind him. Juno looked up from his comms and stared.

The distance from the door to the bed felt infinite, Juno still so far away as to be unreachable. Instead, Peter carved an orbit to the chair at Juno’s desk, which was cluttered with papers and hair pins and photographs and makeup stains and snack wrappers and rubbing alcohol and unused bandages and used bandages and multicolored sticky notes.

Peter turned the chair to face Juno and sat down, heavily. He felt his robe slip down one shoulder, and he did not move to readjust it. It was just as well; Juno did not move his gaze from Peter’s face, either.

“Nureyev.”

The word came slow and quiet in the dimness of the room. Juno said his name like he had always said it, careful and protective, and Peter knew, then, that Juno had never uttered it to another soul.

Juno’s eye, which was still trained on Peter’s own, reflected only the feeble bedside light, and was no less star-like for it.

There were a hundred things Peter wanted to say. A thousand words had hummed in his head for the past few weeks. Scraps of declarations, unfinished drafts of questions. Scribbled down and scratched out, but never on paper. Peter knew better than to leave physical evidence behind, not when such a skilled detective might try to find it.

Though Juno had never needed paper, had he. He knew. He must have known, from the moment Peter looked at him on the hood of the Ruby 7, that Peter still loved him. That Peter had never stopped.

_Who are you protecting this time?_ The words suddenly burned brighter than all the others in his mind, and he almost opened his mouth to say them, but Juno’s unflinching, gentle stare made him pause.

Juno wanted to speak first, he realized then. The detective’s poker face had never been stellar, but now Peter could see every half-formed thought, every rejected question, every unspoken word telegraphed across Juno’s face as he tried to choose where to begin.

Open, Peter suddenly thought. Open and bare. But not by accident; terrible poker face or no, Juno wasn’t trying to hide anything now. He was all the more beautiful for it.

When Juno at last began to speak, Peter did not pay particular attention to his words. The words were inconsequential; he knew what they would be almost before Juno said them, because they were the same words Peter wished to say, the same words that played in his head night after night, his and Juno’s voices mingling and overlapping in his imagination until he could not tell them apart.

Now, as Juno spoke, Peter listened not to his words but to the cadence of his voice, the soft near-whisper of it that seemed to fill the silent room like a haze of smoke, the low tones occasionally interrupted with high, uncertain pitches. He listened to Juno’s gentle stutters and cracks and imperfections, each an admission laid bare with no need for explanation. He had always loved Juno’s voice, warmer and more welcoming than one might expect from someone of his temperament, and Peter had by now had the privilege to hear it in all its varied forms, including, as he had heard it that night and as he heard it now, in the private gentleness of sincere affection.

In the yellowed half-light of the bedroom, he watched Juno. The way his lips, still smudged with lipstick, moved around the words, the way his eye only ever strayed from Peter’s face when he was embarrassed, the way he would sometimes toss his hand through the air for emphasis. The way the light caught the scars that marred his skin, scars that, disguise or no, Juno never bothered hiding with makeup or sleeves or shame. Peter wanted to touch each one, as he hadn’t the time to do last time, to learn their texture against Juno’s skin.

And then suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, Juno laughed. It was a short, quiet, self-deprecating thing, but it made Peter’s breath catch in his throat. For the first time since this new Juno’s arrival, a sense of deep, certain familiarity rose in Peter’s chest.

His Juno. This was _his_ Juno, and it was a silly revelation, really, because he had always been. He had changed, yes, he had brightened and shone and grown into his name like it was a second skin. But that did not mean he was not still Peter’s, still Nureyev’s. A goddess he may well be, but as Peter had spectacularly failed to see for the past few weeks, that was not all that Juno was. A protector, a destroyer, who could burn and warm in equal measure, and who did not always choose wisely. Even goddesses make mistakes, and Juno had made so many, was still making so many, that it could only mean that perhaps he was human, too.

He had looked wonderful in gold that night, Peter mused, but he looked much better here, half-undressed and tired and imperfect. For the first time in weeks, he looked reachable.

So, naturally, Peter reached for him.

As Peter slowly rose from the chair and moved to sit on the bed, Juno’s words stuttered to a stop. There was more to say, Peter knew, more for Juno to say and plenty that Peter had not yet had the chance to. That was all right, though; they would both have time to say them eventually. For now, Peter sat down on the edge of Juno’s bed as Juno pulled himself upright to sit next to him. He was close, and warm, and there was a look in his eye that Peter would have gladly snuffed out every sun for.

And Juno allowed Peter to kiss him, and Peter allowed Juno the same. And, to Peter’s great relief, there was no burning at all; only a laugh that sounded like the wind on Martian sands, and a name, whispered softly, just once, in the warm darkness of the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
